rogue two
by wisegirlgeek
Summary: in a post-apocalyptic world thalia and luke find each other and learn to love. thaluke (with a percabeth interruption), for DrakonOwl21195's birthday!


_[san francisco, 2309]_

 _[i wish heaven was like my hell because it is lovely]_

A twelve-year-old living on the streets is not an everyday occurrence in a post-apocalyptic world because _people_ are out of the ordinary, rare findings, obscure in the light (or the dark).

Thalia Grace is a sob story for the masses—a forgotten father (lost in the dystopian catalyst), a drunk mother, a brother she has never seen after the storm of 2304. But Luke Castellan is not one of the masses, and her story is so like his that he cannot help but familiarize with her. He, too, knows the pain of never knowing your father and having a mother gone mad.

It's been a simple struggle for him since the start, five years ago—do not get caught by the authorities (oddities in the lost world, pay them no heed) and _live,_ because every-bloody-day might be your last. Nowhere in his plans for survival is it stated that he become best friends with another outlaw but it's not like he ever sticks to the rules, anyway. They are meant to be broken, just like him.

Before long it stops being just him and suddenly it's _Thalia and Luke_ whenever anybody asks them who they are—well, the answers change, but they know the truth. They know that underneath the lies that the world knows there will always be them.

—

"Nine billion," he says, looking at the sky, thousands of stars visible from his vantage point on the hill. It is easy to see the heavens now; the lack of humanity has provoked a lack of pollution, one good thing in the mess of the new world. "We started out with nine billion and most of them are gone."

Numbers are not known—who would calculate them?—but he knows that the world has come a long, long way from nine billion.

"That's amazing, in a crazy way," Thalia says, spread out next to him. Their fingers are entwined and he feels guilty, for a small, incomprehensible moment in time. Guilty because this girl is impressionable and guilty because he has bitten her with his evil claws and guilty because he does not regret it. Not a single bit.

Even though he does feel guilty, it will pass—it's not like there is any way to change anything that is done already. With no parents, this is the life for this ragtag duo.

"Why?" he rolls over onto his stomach, prompting her to do the same. Their arms get entangled in the process and they erupt into uncontrollable giggles, laughter sounding down from the crux of the hill to the barren land below.

"Because—because—Luke, _stop it!"_ he tickles her stomach and she chokes out her next words amid spouts of snorting, "I—isn't it amazing that humanity can survive it?"

He stops. The mood has turned somber, a little bit too much. "Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing."

She falls asleep minutes later, black hair covering his stomach. But he stays up until the sun wraps pink around the sky, wondering how she can think anything is amazing in the bleak, dead world.

—

"Run!" he cries at the top of his lungs, "I'll meet you at the safe house!"

The soldiers tug at his arms and rip at his clothes and _he can't really believe_ that they are claiming that _he_ is promoting anarchy.

"No," Thalia says, frozen, panting, "not happening."

He's being whisked away so fast. He doesn't have time to scream again and then—and then—

And then he is released; or rather, he is tossed onto the ground. There are screams behind him and when he finally is confident enough in his ability to stand up without tipping over like a pendulum he is shocked by the scene of Thalia holding a baseball bat over the heads of two soldiers. One is knocked out cold but the other is staggering around, a dazed look on his face.

They both run, but not before the soldier takes out a knife and cuts Luke's face, bisecting it. The wound is not deep but he knows that the scar will last forever.

* * *

 _[new york, 2312]_

 _[the worst thing about life is that it is a lie; there is no escaping death, nor the truth]_

When he is seventeen Luke has a hard time controlling himself around her. Because Thalia is still his best friend—she always will be—but he has started to introduce the possibility of something more.

One night he just tells her, out of the blue, figuring that even if she doesn't reciprocate his feelings they can still be best friends. Still be outlaws together.

Luckily, she seems to share his feelings.

The first time they kiss the sun is shining and the world seems alight again after what feels like eons of just . . . _nothing._

His hands are in her hair and her hands are in his and they're just standing in a field of dead grass (it seems greener, afterwards) and there is nothing, just _nothing,_ but them for a few moments and he knew that he fell in love ages ago but he never knew that it could feel like this.

It's the first time for both of them, so of course they don't know what they're doing. It seems pretty great, though, so he guesses that it's the right away.

Afterwards she steps back and although the sun is shining it is a cold day and he misses her warmth. He makes to pull her closer and she follows through, folding into his chest. They fall onto the dead, soft grass until the sun goes down, wrapped in nothing but each other.

—

The second time they kiss it's dawn, the morning after the first one. They're sleeping next to each other, draped haphazardly, limbs entangled.

They've done this plenty of times but now, at least for him, it is strangely intimate. He wakes up and the first thing he hears is _chirping;_ and then he looks up to the treetops to see birds singing. He doesn't know if they've ever done it before. This is the first time he's heard them.

The world is bathed in an unearthly glow, shining. He feels acute, suddenly, as if everything is suddenly sharply falling into place. Like he's home.

He knows that his home is in her eyes, those deep electric blue _whirlpools,_ crackling with the warrior spirit contained in her soul. He reaches out to tap her eyelids, still heavy with sleep. When she doesn't respond in any way, he tickles her.

In that slight moment between her waking up and glaring and him kissing her and causing her to break into smile he swears that _infinity_ is what they are.

—

The third time they kiss is in an abandoned parking lot, one mostly unharmed from the flood seven years prior. While the paint on the road is long gone, the dark granite stays intact. Cars lay, busted and rusted, around the lot. She presses him onto the creaking back of a particularly old car and lips meet lips.

After that, Luke stops counting.

He hopes that there's no need to keep going.

* * *

 _[aspen, 2313]_

 _[the best smiles are that of the broken, lost in oblivion]_

"Oh, come on Luke. You aren't going to lose to a _girl,_ are you?" Thalia taunts him. He tries to focus on dodging her knife, not looking into her eyes.

"Why—can't—we—just—use—guns?" he pants, falling to the ground after parrying what seemed like a billion thrusts.

She taps the knife (a good, hunting variety) against her thigh, rhythmically. "Because those can be taken away," she rolls her eyes for the fifty-fourth time. He was counting. He likes how her eyes look when she rolls them. She looks very pretty when she rolls her eyes. They reflect all the colors of the sun—

Seconds later, a knife is pressed to his throat. He swallows, Adam's apple bobbing up and down, avoiding the knife. " _Really,_ Thalia?"

"Lesson number one of fighting; never get distracted."

"I can't help it," he moans, "you're rather distracting, you know!"

She laughs and sheaths the weapon into the handmade container on her (also handmade) belt. Settling next to him on the ground, she slides her hand into his, a perfect fit. He smiles, finally breathing at a normal pace. And then they kiss.

And then they kiss more.

They kiss until the soldiers show up and recognize their faces.

"Hey," a masked man jumps up behind them, and they immediately stop. "You're those kids from the net posts."

He casually gets up with his girlfriend and slouches up against a nearby tree. The officials always seem unnerved when they see his nonplussed reaction to the guns hanging on their belts. "Well," he starts, "are we really that young? You grow up rather fast in an apocalyptic world, you know."

And then the soldier starts moving and both Thalia and Luke grab their trusty knives and stand back to back and watch his every move unnervingly. They can see his steps falter as he moves closer, a little bit frightened by their lack of fear. And Luke smiles, a twisted-creepy-like grin.

"Catch me if you can," he says, and then he grabs Thalia's hand and they sprint into the dead dry bush to the left of them and avoid gunshots and they—they are _free._

* * *

 _[seattle, 2315]_

 _[in-between is the best kind of love; hate and truth are lies wrapping around each other]_

When they are twenty and eighteen they feel old. Very old. "We're legal adults, can you believe it?" she says one day out of the blue.

"Yeah," he smirks, "although we're not _very_ legal . . ."

"Oh, come on," Thalia tells him, but the smile on her face is evident. "I feel like we should do something. Something big, you know?"

"Why?" he doesn't understand. "Isn't life like this fine?"

"We should celebrate, Luke," she says, "we've lived life this far. We should celebrate the fact that there's a way to do it."

"So what should we do? You can decide, your idea and all that."

"Hey!"

"Bloody emotional girls."

" _Luke—"_

At the end, they pick twelve-year-old Annabeth Chase off the streets anyways.

—

"Family, huh?" he says, ruffling her hair, smiling at their surrogate daughter running around in the wild.

"Yeah," she smiles, wind lifting up the corners of her mouth. "Family forever."

"Should—I was thinking—um—"

She laughs and pushes at his chest, giggling, black bangs flying into her face. "What's got you at a loss for words, Mr. Smooth?"

He frowns at the nickname, one she (and Annabeth) had taken to calling him by after considering his skills in smooth talking people to give him _anything._ "You're not making this easy, you know."

"I'm _never_ going to make things easy for you, Luke. Get used to it."

They're silent for a few minutes before he speaks up again without stumbling over his words. "I think we should get settled down. Maybe get a house, a nice job. I want to raise Annabeth right."

It takes her a few minutes to comprehend the weight of the statement but then she understands what he's saying and kisses him thoroughly until Annabeth speaks up to tell them to stop being disgusting. "I love you so, so much."

—

It's a nice place and it costs nothing, of course, because the owners are dead—the house hasn't been revisited ever since the storm. The few neighbors nearby welcome the couple and Annabeth into their homely environment with open arms—the majority are older people whose children washed away ten years ago. They dote over Annabeth and she loves the attention.

For once, they're living in a populated area with a stable climate, a moral community in which they have to work for a living. "Isn't it great," he says, "to not be criminals, for once?"

"Definitely," she responds, "maybe this would be what it would have been like without the storm."

"Maybe."

* * *

 _[san francisco, 2318]_

 _[being rogue is the new death—and we are all gone from the start]_

"I don't like him," he groans, watching Annabeth look at her boyfriend mess around on his skateboard. Every time he lands he blows her a kiss and she laughs and blows one back.

Thalia pouts at him. "I think that they're rather adorable."

"Really? He's such a jerk."

"Those are just your fatherly instincts kicking in."

"No—they're not! How can you not see that he's an idiot?"

"He's a lot like you, actually."

"Wh—what? No way Jackson is like me. Unless you're calling me a gigantic as—"

"Watch your language, Luke Castellan," she says sarcastically. "We're in a public park."

"Geez, Thals. But honestly, we're nothing alike."

"You've both got this kinda street-look to you and you have the same morals and you both hate your fathers and—do I have to go on?"

"Wow. I kinda see it now . . ."

"See! You're alike."

Annabeth runs to them, light blonde hair flying into her eyes. He fingers his hair, the same blond, and thinks for the thousandth time that she could be his real daughter. "Can Percy and I go walk to the ice-skating rink? I swear I'll be back by ten!"

She gives him the puppy-dog eyes and he's stuck. "Fine. But if you aren't home in time I'll kill Percy."

"Great! Thanks, Luke!" she hugs him and then immediately finds Percy and runs off. He's a little scared about her going off and ice-skating, and he wouldn't have let her do it if Percy wasn't going to be there. The kid has insane luck with anything to do with water.

—

The sun is starting to go down, painting the sky and vivid mixture of auburn and orange. He grabs Thalia by the waist and she throws an arm around his shoulder and they just watch the sunlight dim until it's gone and the stars come out and then they lie on the ground like they did that night nine years ago.

"Nine billion," he says, "is amazing."

* * *

 **Oh my lord where do I start . . .**

 **First of all, story—sorry if it was crazy and/or all over the place and confusing. My original birthday fic got deleted so I threw this together in three crazy days and I had legitimately no time so sorry.**

 **I don't really want to divert attention, but I started a new, solo FF account for poetry; titled 'collapsar'. Link in my faves. I publish multi-fandom poetry there.**

 **Thanks to Koala-Lover-ABC-123, who read the beginning part over for me. She couldn't do the end because I wrote it too late, so all those typos are on me. Sorry.**

 **And now to the point of this ramble: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DRAKONOWL21195!**

 **Yes, I'm publishing this a few hours early so you see it early. Her birthday is March 20th. I think. Because if it's not I seriously fucked something up sorry.**

 **Anyways, I wanted you to be able to see something when you wake up/go to bed . . .**

 **I can't believe that I was writing a fic for you last year too! We've been friends for so long, you're the best :) we've both matured so much in the past year-thirteen months-ish and I'm so happy that I've gotten to spend that time with you, even if it's only online.**

 **Thirteen is huge, you're a teenager now (and leaving me behind wah) and I can't wait to go through this next year with you!**

 **-Dee**


End file.
